Unexpectedly, Milo - Matthew Dicks [42]
And here’s the saddest part. I liked Meghan and Kristen a lot. Lisa Palumbo too. Another tweener like me. Smart but no money and terrible skin. The four of us could’ve been friends. Good friends. Me and Lisa and Kristen and Meghan. But to become their friends and be seen hanging out with those girls would’ve meant admitting to my second-tier status. Instead of getting closer to those girls, I tried to distance myself from them, as if that would make it clear to everyone that I was better than them.
There were only a couple times after elementary school that I felt in the good graces of my old Group One friends. Kim Maynard. Melissa Davis. Annette Ryler. Charity Dumars. All those girls who I admired and hated at the same time. The first time was in the fall of eighth grade. Mrs. Walker’s language arts class. First floor. Harry Truman Middle School. I was sitting in the back row one day when I was called on to diagram a sentence on the board. I think I was the only kid in the fucking world who liked to diagram sentences. No wonder I had no friends.
On the way back to my seat, I noticed Sherry Ferroni, a fellow Group One reject but a hell of a lot worse than me. She was a girl who had started out cute in first grade but was fat by seventh grade. Poor was bad enough. Fat and poor was a killer. Anyway, she was sitting in the third or fourth row, and a red blotch was clearly visible on the crotch of her shorts. Yellow shorts too. Like three sizes too small. The worst. She had gotten her period and didn’t know it. Probably the first time the poor girl had gotten it, and in that moment, I saw my opening. A chance to increase my status at Sherry’s expense. I went back to my seat, leaned over to Kim Maynard, and told her the news. She got up immediately and went to the front of the room to throw something away and caught her own view of Sherry’s growing stain on the way back to her seat. Kim sat down, looked at me, and mouthed the words “Oh my God!” And in that moment, in those three little words, I was back in the Group One fold. Buddies with Kim, just like we were in second grade again.
I spread the news around the class as best as I could, and before long, everyone was finding a reason to get out of their seat and walk by Sherry. Pencils needed sharpening. Bathroom passes were being asked for left and right. Every boy in the class was suddenly coughing and needing a drink from the water fountain. Every excuse in the book to get up and take a peek. Kids started giggling, the whispering got louder, and finally Mrs. Walker stopped the class and demanded to know what the hell was going on. Asshole extraordinaire Glenn Trudel then announced the news to the class, even though almost all of them already knew.
“Sherry needs a rag, Mrs. Walker. She needs one bad!” he said.
God. I’ll never forget it.
Sherry looked lost for a minute, clueless about the asshole’s comment, and then I saw her begin to figure things out. She looked around the room, saw the kids giggling and whispering and staring, and then she looked down and saw. Then she put her hands over her crotch like a three-year-old that’s pissed her pants and ran out of the room.
She was out of school for the rest of the week, and when she came back on Monday, kids had a nickname ready for her: Ragamuffin. The popular kids used it behind her back and the scumbags said it to her face. I think it stuck all the way through high school.
Of course, Kim and Melissa and Charity didn’t like me any better after that. I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess it’s sometimes nice to see